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  • Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, this year’s Italian American Woman of the Year at the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival, rides in the festival’s Precision Oil and Gas Grand Parade Saturday morning in Clarksburg with her husband, state Sen. Erik Wells, D-Kanawha, and their daughter, Delaney Wells, 8. Tennant remembers attending the first festival in 1979, when she helped her Uncle Smitty sell slices of pizza. She appreciates how the festival has helped to teach and pass on the Italian culture. PHOTO BY TAMMY SHRIVER

    Celebrating heritage
September 5, 2010

Celebrating heritage

Natalie Tennant festival’s 2010 Italian American Woman of the Year

By Mary Wade Burnside Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT — Natalie Tennant remembers the first West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival in Clarksburg in 1979.

She was 11 years old. Her mother, Rose Mary Brunetti Tennant, was on the festival committee and her Uncle Smitty Brunetti, who owned Smitty’s Pizza in North View, sold pizza by the slice.

Tennant helped him with the pizza sales.

“I loved that,” said Tennant, a Fairview native with Harrison County roots and now the secretary of state of West Virginia. “I have that salesmanship in me. I remember counting the money back correctly. That was back when you had to count the money back. I was so proud of that.”

Seven years later, in 1986, Tennant was a princess in the court of Queen Regina Maria.

Tennant’s association with the festival continues this year as she was named the 2010 Italian American Woman of the Year. She was honored at a banquet on Thursday at Vio Veneto in Bridgeport and also rode in a car in the Precision Oil & Gas Grand Parade on Saturday morning in Clarksburg.

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